PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Elsa G. Guillot AU - Murray P. Cox TI - High Frequency Haplotypes are Expected Events, not Historical Figures AID - 10.1101/022160 DP - 2015 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 022160 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/09/17/022160.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/09/17/022160.full AB - Cultural transmission of reproductive success states that successful men have more children and pass this raised fecundity to their offspring. Balaresque and colleagues found high frequency haplotypes in a Central Asian Y chromosome dataset, which they attribute to cultural transmission of reproductive success by prominent historical men, including Genghis Khan. Using coalescent simulation, we show that these high frequency haplotypes are consistent with a neutral model, where they commonly appear simply by chance. Hence, explanations invoking cultural transmission of reproductive success are statistically unnecessary.